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Monday, November 16, 2015

Review: Omoide no Mani (When Marnie Was There)

When
Marnie Was There (Omoide no Mani) (2015): Written by
Keiko Niwa, Masashi Ando, and Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and directed by Hiromasa
Yonebayashi. Starring: Sara Takatsuki and Kasumi Arimura. Running
Time: 103 minutes. Based on the
novel of the same name by Joan G. Robinson.

Rating:
3.5/4

There is a wonderful way in which movies
produced by Studio Ghibli seem to breath, move, and live at their own special
pace, even as you are watching them. This
is especially true for their quieter works that are consciously set in very
normal, real-world settings, and many of which are lesser-known as a result. Films like Whisper of the Heart, My
Neighbor Totoro, Only Yesterday, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Arrietty, while perhaps containing some
fantasy or fairy-tale characters or elements, eschew the more
overtly-astounding visuals and grander themes of Princess Mononoke, Spirited
Away, or Grave of the Fireflies,
choosing instead to focus on small stories in times and places you could easily
imagine yourself occupying. They are
meditative, lavishing an almost heart-rending level of attention to every
detail of the postcard-perfect worlds they create, making every frame seem like
a home someone has lived in for a very long time. When Marnie
Was There, possibly (though not yet certainly) the last feature-length
movie Studio Ghibli will gift to the world, falls into this category. If it really is to be their last act, what a
beautiful final movement it is.

As
is overwhelmingly the case where Studio Ghibli is concerned, our main character
is a young girl, a 12-year-old orphan named Anna. We first meet her in the city of Sapporo,
where she lives with her foster parents.
Anna is, to put it very mildly, not your usual
innocent-and-happy-as-a-clam preteen Disney protagonist. She struggles with depression, passive resentment
towards her dead parents, and (this is hinted at later) a strong dislike of her
somewhat-foreign physical appearance.
She sits apart from the other children at school so she can draw out the
fantasies in her head, seeing herself as outside a circle occupied by everyone
else. Worried that the environment of
the city is too much for her (she has asthma, and the film opens with her
having a particularly bad attack), the mother decides to send her to spend the
summer with some relatives of hers in a small seaside town, thinking a few
months of fresh sea air will be just what she needs, both physically and
mentally.

The
place is charming enough when Anna arrives- the couple she is sent to stay with
is jovial and friendly, and her room has a stunning view of a nearby cove. When she first goes out to explore, she notes
a grand, but aging, mansion across a marsh, and runs over to check it out. Finding that is has clearly been empty for
years, and noting that evening is upon her, she turns to leave, only to realize
that the tide has come in and she is cut off from the other shore. Thankfully, a local fisherman (known, we
later learn, for almost never speaking) happened to be coming by on his way in,
and he takes her back with him on his small boat. Relieved, she turns back for one last glimpse
of the house and….wait, are those lights in the upper bedroom window???

This
is the first of a number of major twists in the story; each one is expertly executed
and, bit-by-bit, they build up a remarkably multi-layered mystery yarn. When Anna goes back to the house, at first
abandoned but then suddenly lit-up and new-looking again, she meets a cheerful,
vivacious, blond-haired girl about her own age, named Marnie. Marnie is everything Anna is not- lively,
outgoing, and endlessly cheerful- but they immediately feel drawn to each other
(indeed, Marnie drops hints she’s been expecting Anna), and as the days go by
Anna starts to think only of when she will see Marnie next, and what sort of
new adventures they will have together.

If
an empty house suddenly coming alive with apparently real people only at night
wasn’t enough of a tip-off for you, all is not as it seems. Is Marnie a ghost? An angel?
Something worse? Or is Anna
hallucinating the entire time? As simple
as the core narrative of the film is, much of its brilliance lies in how all
but the best guessers will feel in the dark about what’s really going on right
up until the scene of final revelation comes about at the end.

Tied
into the central mysteries of the main story are a lot of side themes that,
unfortunately, are for the most part only hinted at- issues surrounding depression,
emotional abuse, crisis of identities, passive xenophobia, the struggles of
being an orphan, and even sexuality can be glimpsed in scenes here and
there. Most of them ultimately center on
Anna’s crisis of identity, and that is the main focus of the film by the
end. One of the biggest things she
wrestles with throughout is her complicated feelings about not knowing her real
parents, which are tied up into her equally complicated feelings about her
foster parents. Her foster mother,
despite only appearing at the beginning and the end, leaves an especially big
impression- we see so clearly how much she loves Anna, and how hurt she feels
that she doesn’t know how to help her more.
A crucial moment at the very end between her and Anna (which I will not
dare spoil here) is one of the film’s most powerful moments, an incredible
example of brilliant character animation.

Speaking
of the animation itself, this movie is, of course, visually stunning; this is
Ghibli, after all, so what else would you expect? Blues and greens are the order of the day,
with the sea and sky combining with the greens of the island marches and
forests to create a calming effect, which aids in the dreamy quality of many of
the film’s best scenes.

Sadly,
not all of the potential threads or problems the film sets up are brought to
play at the end. The silent fisherman,
for example, looks like he might end up being someone important to the story of
who (and what) Marnie really is, but whether or not that is the case is never
really resolved. And while the scene
that, for the audience, answers all hanging questions is great, it’s undercut a
bit by the fact that Anna herself apparently only puts the pieces together in
another scene 5 minutes later. It’s not
a flaw or failing of the film, per say, but arranging the scenes that way was
an odd choice, to say the least. But
with that said, even if you are ultimately not entirely satisfied (or maybe
even more confused) by what explanations are offered by the end, When Marnie Was There is nonetheless an
incredibly moving and beautifully rendered coming-of-age tale, easily one of
the best animated films of the year thus far, and if it must be so, a graceful
last note by the Meisters of Studio Ghibli.

2 comments:

Saw this a few days ago, and I was unprepared for how emotionally moved I would be. Between this film, Inside Out, Room, and Amy, it's gotten quite "dusty" for me at the movies this year. I'm glad you pointed out the ambiguity of Marnie's appearance to Anna; that's something Studio Ghibli has really nailed in their great films (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, etc.). I also appreciated the many parallels being drawn between Anna and the other characters, as when Anna must be the comforting friend for Marnie in the haunted silo, or how Sayaka clearly looks up to Anna as a big sister figure.

It was really fascinating spending time with a protagonist whose history of grief led naturally to her self loathing and distrust of other people. I suppose I saw the fisherman as a logical extension of who she could become without learning to trust others: taciturn, isolated, but still good hearted.

I did find the whole explanation of Marnie's true relation to Anna as quite obvious and redundant, especially when the film devotes so much time to Marnie's backstory in the last 20 minutes after cleverly dropping hints earlier. I'm not even convinced the revelation of their "true" relation adds a whole lot. It's possible Yonebayashi and his screenwriters were trying to stay faithful to the source material. I just think the onscreen relationship of clandestine meetups and midnight parties told us more than any revelation possibly could.

In any case, I'm still a huge fan of this one. I'd give it 3.5/4 stars as well. I hope this won't be the last we see of Ghibli, but if it is, it's a worthy swan song.

Always glad to hear your thoughts! I agree, really the only nitpicks at the end I have are with how some of the story was wrapped up. I loved how lightly it tread through a lot of really sensitive subject matter without simplifying or dismissing any of it. A really small, but masterfully made, film.